Vehicles operating in an autonomous mode (e.g., driverless) can relieve occupants, especially the driver, from some driving-related responsibilities. When operating in an autonomous mode, the vehicle can navigate to various locations using onboard sensors, allowing the vehicle to travel with minimal human interaction or in some cases without any passengers.
Motion planning and control are critical operations in autonomous driving. The accuracy and efficiency of the motion planning and control depends heavily on the sensors of the vehicle. Different sensors may have different requirements or specifications. Typically, an autonomous vehicle has a centralized computing chassis that connects to all sensors and actuators on a car. A sensor unit is utilized to connect a host system to the sensors. The sensor unit typically includes one or more sensor processing modules. These sensor processing modules can generate significant heat. It is challenging to design a container of the sensor unit to efficiently remove the heat from the sensor unit.